This Program Project will examine several large areas of concern regarding the process of caregiving by adult children to impaired people. Three separate projects will pursue different questions on caregiving stress, drawing from a pool of caregiving families that have already been studied at the Philadelphia Geriatric Center as well as recruiting new families. The three projects will share a common data core, which will be responsible for recruitment, subject selection, data management, training of interviewers, scheduling interviews, quality control of the data, and processing of the data prior to analysis. The common theme of the Program Project is the study of variations in the process of caregiving and the mental health outcomes of caregiving that are associated with marital status, intrafamilial dynamics, length of caregiving and characteristics of the person and her social setting. The Marital Status project will study the correlates and outcomes associated with once-married, multiply-married, never married, widowed, divorced and separated caregiving daughters of widowed impaired older parents. The Family project will study the process and develop new methods for study of family-level influences on and effects on caregiving. The Caregiving Career project will study subjects over an extended period of time, for varying periods including that from the beginning of caregiving until the death of the impaired person. The combined results of the studies will yeild new insights on the meaning of caregiving, the family as a unit for study, and the place of caregiving within the context of the caregiver's life. New knowledge will also be gained about women's roles, the differences between caregiving for Alzheimers patients and nondemented physically impaired people within- household and extra-household caregiving, and household constellations as sources of variation in caregiving.